• 1879 ~ New York’s Madison Square Garden displayed a real floating ship in a gigantic water tank as Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, was performed.
• 1902 ~ Stefan Wolpe, German-born American composer
1918 ~ Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer and pianist
Read quotes by and about Bernstein
Links to more information about Bernstein Grammy winner
• 1941 ~ Skinnay Ennis and his orchestra recorded the tune Don’t Let Julia Fool Ya.
• 1942 ~ Walter Williams, Singer with The O’Jays
• 1955 ~ Elvis Costello (Declan McManus), Musician, songwriter
• 1961 ~ Billy Ray Cyrus, Singer
• 1964 ~ The Beatles received a gold record for their hit single A Hard Day’s Night. It was the third gold record for the Fab Four. They would collect 18 more through 1970.
• 1971 ~ Ted Lewis passed away. He was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician.
• 1982 ~ The group, Fleetwood Mac, received a gold record for the album Mirage.
• 2001 ~ Aaliyah died at the age of 22. She was a R&B singer and budding actress who made her film debut in “Romeo Must Die” and was killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas.
• 2001 ~ Jazz musician John Nelson, the father of pop star Prince, died at the age of 85. Nelson was the model for a character in the 1984 Prince movie “Purple Rain.” He also co-wrote songs on several of his son’s hit albums.
In the 1950s, Nelson was a pianist in the jazz group Prince Rogers Trio featuring singer Mattie Shaw. Shaw and Nelson married, and they named their son Prince Roger Nelson.
Nelson left the household when Prince was about 10 and his sister Tyka was 8. The father and son reconciled after Prince began his climb to fame.
Nelson co-wrote Computer Blue on the Purple Rain album, The Ladder on Around the World in a Day; Christopher Tracy’s Parade and Under the Cherry Moon on Parade and Scandalous on the Batman soundtrack.
It’s been more than 80 years, but Dollie McKenzie still remembers her first piano lessons.
It was about 1933, and an 8-year-old McKenzie would trek — usually by herself — each week to her piano teacher’s Ucon home, more than a mile down the road.
“We didn’t have a car, so I’d walk — winter and summer,” McKenzie said. “In the wintertime, it was pretty cold. (My teacher) would have me warm up my hands in warm water so I could play. She was very kind and loving.”
Since then, McKenzie has come a long way. Now 90, she’s conducted, accompanied, sang and performed piano and organ at hundreds — if not thousands — of local concerts, musicals, weddings, funerals, festivals and gatherings. She’s taught hundreds of students over the years and is the oldest performing member of the longstanding Idaho Falls Music Club.
In February, McKenzie chose to celebrate the start of her next decade of life fittingly — with a public music program featuring a performance from McKenzie herself along with her daughter, Rexburg-based musician Beverly Solomon, and her granddaughter, Jenny Solomon.
“There’s a song I used to sing (with local women’s chorale group Idaho Falls Choralaires) called ‘Let All My Life Be Music,’ and that’s what I’ve been,” McKenzie said. “My whole life has been music.”
Technically, music first entered McKenzie’s life at age 8. But she said age 15 was the point at which she finally “took hold” of the art form. It was also in those later teen years, she said she started teaching piano.
After high school, she bought her first upright piano with cash, for about $300. McKenzie attended Ricks College and studied music education. At Ricks, she took piano and organ lessons under a renowned local music instructor named Ruth Barrus.
McKenzie’s professional career took off after college. In 1946, she took a music teaching position in Burley public schools. She also joined the music club and served in numerous positions over the years including president, and chairs of several committees. She said she was even chosen by the club as Music Woman of the Year in the 1940s.
“She’s one of the most talented, musical people I’ve ever met,” said Bonita Higley, McKenzie’s longtime friend and fellow member of the Idaho Falls Music Club. “She could play the piano like nobody else could. We just became really good friends and I respected her so much.”
“Dollie is a very dedicated person to music,” added music club member Elaine Jensen. “She is a very, very tremendous lady in music — a very fine musician.”
McKenzie stopped teaching at age 70, though she continues playing locally. She was the driving force behind getting a sing-along started at her current residence, MorningStar Senior Living of Idaho Falls, where she lives with her husband, Dan.
“When we moved here in 2009, about the only activity for old folks was bingo,” McKenzie said. “I said, ‘There’s more to life than bingo.’ So I started the sing-along and it’s one of the most popular things here, now … it gets people involved, gets them thinking and using their faculties. Compared with doing bingo, it’s just an important thing in their life.”
McKenzie said she lives by several different mottos — among them, a quote by Jim Elliot: “When the time comes to die, make sure that’s all you have to do.” And McKenzie said she has a lot left to do. On that list is continuing to fill her life with music — McKenzie still plays every day.
“Of course there are people who don’t have a lot of music in their life, and I guess the only reason why is they’ve never been exposed to it,” McKenzie said. “Of course not everyone’s going to be a musician. But I do think it’s been very important for me. I think it’s just been an (activity that’s helped) round me out, and (given me) purpose.”
Baby kicks. Music plays. And that’s just the beginning. Movable toys on the overhead gym encourage baby to bat and grasp. Move the arch down for tummy-time play, or let baby sit and entertain you with a piano concert! And now with a removable piano, you can take the musical fun wherever you and baby go!
Features
Four ways to play: Lay & play; Tummy time; Sit & play; Take-along
Music rewards baby as she kicks the piano keys
Five busy activity toys & a large mirror
Toys include a hippo teether, elephant clackers, rollerball frog, and more
Short or long-play music—up to 15 minutes
Soft, comfy mat
Power/volume control
Requires 3 AA batteries
Toys overhead encourage batting and grasping, including a hippo teether, elephant clackers, rollerball frog and more!
Stretching & kicking
With four ways to play, this musical toy grows with your little one! From laying and playing, to tummy time and sitting up, busy activities at each stage are just the beginning of the fun. Baby’s in charge of the action as her little kicky feet activate music. Moveable toys overhead encourage batting and grasping, including a hippo teether, elephant clackers, rollerball frog and more.
When it’s time to change modes, move the arch down for tummy time or let baby sit up and entertain you with a piano concert. Remove the piano and take the fun on-the-go. Includes long and short play modes with up to 15 minutes of music. Power and volume control for quiet play.
Removable piano provides musical fun wherever you and baby go!
Learning through play!
As baby plays, new discoveries are made and key developmental skills get stronger and stronger. As baby stretches and kicks at the piano keys or bats at and reaches for the busy activity toys, gross motor skills are enhanced. Music, lights and bright colors stimulate baby’s senses.
Help baby learn the connection between actions and reactions. Put baby’s foot within reach of the piano. From there, it’s bound to happen: baby’s foot will connect and activate a fun and rewarding response from the gym!
• 1854 ~ Moritz Moszkowski, Polish-born German pianist and composer
More information about Moszkowski
• 1900 ~ Ernst Krenek, Austrian-born American composer, conductor and pianist
• 1905 ~ Constant Lambert, British composer, conductor and writer
• 1912 ~ Gene (Eugene Curran) Kelly, Dancer, actor: Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris, Anchors Aweigh, The Three Musketeers, Marjorie Morningstar, Inherit the Wind, North and South Book I; director: Singin’ in the Rain, Hello, Dolly!, A Guide for the Married Man, The Cheyenne Social Club
• 1923 ~ Billy Jones and Ernie Hare, The Happiness Boys, were heard on radio for the first time. The two were billed as radio’s first comedians and were also credited with creating and performing the first singing commercial.
• 1936 ~ Rudy Lewis, Singer with Drifters
• 1942 ~ Patricia McBride, Ballerina: New York City Ballet. For many years she was Mikhail Baryshnikov’s only partner
• 1943 ~ LIFE magazine spotlighted a dance craze that was sweeping the U.S.A., the Lindy Hop
• 1947 ~ Keith Moon, Singer, drummer with The Who
• 1947 ~ Margaret Truman, daughter of U.S. President Harry S Truman, presented her first public concert. Margaret sang before 15,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The concert did not get great reviews. In fact, the critics didn’t like Margaret’s singing at all. And Margaret’s dad didn’t like the critics, and said so, from the White House.
• 1949 ~ Rick Springfield, Singer
• 1951 ~ Mark Hudson, Singer with The Hudson Brothers
• 1966 ~ The U.S. premiere of the motion picture Help!, starring The Beatles, was held for thousands of moviegoers wanting to see the group’s first, color, motion picture. Their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, had been produced in black and white.
• 2001 ~ Kathleen Freeman, a veteran character actress whose face if not her name was known to audiences from television sitcoms, the film classic “Singin’ in the Rain” and Broadway’s “The Full Monty,” died of lung cancer at the age of 82.
Freeman gave her final performance in “The Full Monty”. She played a sassy piano player in the hit musical and earned a Tony nomination in May 2001.
Big, brash and funny were Freeman’s trademarks in playing recalcitrant maids, demented nuns, mouthy housekeepers, battle-ax mothers, irate landladies and nosy neighbors.
Starting in the Golden Age of television, Freeman appeared in such shows as “Topper,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “The Lucy Show,” “The Golden Girls,” “Murphy Brown” and “Married … With Children.”
“This will sound very corny and I’m sorry,” Freeman said last year in an Associated Press interview, “but I have always had the sense I was put here to do this: I am somebody who is around to help the world laugh. I have always had that sense. Corny but absolutely true.”
In “Singin’ in the Rain,” considered by many to be the best movie musical ever made, she played Jean Hagen’s frustrated voice teacher. Among Freeman’s other films were the sci-fi thriller “The Fly,” “The Rounders” with Henry Fonda, “Far Country” with Jimmy Stewart, and “North to Alaska” starring John Wayne. More recently she appeared in “Dragnet,” “Gremlins II,” “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” and both “Blues Brothers” comedies.
Freeman was born in Chicago and was propelled into show business at age 2. Her parents had a vaudeville act, Dixon and Freeman, in which their daughter did a little dance.
Freeman attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where she majored in music and was going to be a classical pianist. Then, she said, “A terrible thing happened. I got in a play and got a laugh. I just said a line and, `boom.”‘
Freeman then worked in many small theater groups, including the Circle Players, acting for such eminent directors – and actors – as Charles Laughton, Charlie Chaplin and Robert Morley.
At the same time, the early 1950s, the television explosion took over Los Angeles. From her first regular sitcom role, as the maid in “Topper,” Freeman went on to do just about every sitcom of the last 50 years.
For all her voluminous credits, Freeman’s stage credits were mostly on the road – touring as Miss Hannigan in “Annie” for 18 months, then in “Deathtrap” and later with Lauren Bacall in “Woman of the Year.”
Her only other Broadway appearance was for five months in the 1978 production of “13 Rue de l’Amore” starring Louis Jordan.
• 2001 ~ Frank Emilio Flynn, a blind pianist and Latin jazz pioneer who performed with many great American jazz artists, died at the age of 80.
Flynn lost his sight at age 13 but continued to study and perform classical works, transcribed into Braille, with the Symphonic Orchestra of Havana.
Flynn’s great passion was jazz, and in the 1950s he developed his own jazz-influenced ballad style, known in Cuba as “feeling.”
Performing with the Quinteto Cubana de Musica Moderno, or Cuban Quintet of Modern Music, he developed into one of the most important Cuban jazz musicians of his era.
More recently, he played at New York’s Lincoln Center in 1998 with trumpeters Alfredo Armenteros and Wynton Marsalis.
Pianist and composer Sonya Belousova is celebrating 30 years of Super Mario Bros. with an epic piano medley on the world’s coolest piano.
YouTube channel Player Piano had Belousova play the tribute to the late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on a piano styled after a classic Nintendo Entertainment System. While the medley is good, it’s the amazingly detailed piano that stands out.
The bench looks like a Nintendo controller, while the piano itself is modeled after the console. It comes complete with power and reset buttons as well as connection cords. The flip top door can cover the keys, which Belousova appropriately takes the time to blow on at the end!
1862 ~ Claude Debussy, French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself disliked the term when applied to his compositions.
More information about Debussy
• 1906 ~ The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey began to manufacture the Victrola (record player). The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200. Records sold separately.
• 1917 ~ John Lee Hooker, American blues guitarist and singer, born in Clarksdale, Miss. He began his career in Detroit in 1948 with the release of BoogieChillun, the biggest of his several hit records and a staple of both the blues and rock repertoires. He toured continually, and among “deep blues” artists, enjoyed an unusually successful career, appearing in concerts and on recordings with many of the leading figures in rock. He was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
1928 ~ Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer
More information about Stockhausen
Read quotes by and about Stockhausen
• 1926 ~ Bob Flanigan, Singer with The Four Freshmen
• 1932 ~ The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began its first experimental TV broadcast in England.
• 1938 ~ Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared, dancing, on the cover of LIFE magazine, published on this day.
• 1938 ~ Count Basie recorded the classic swing tune, Jumpin’ at the Woodside, for Decca Records.
• 1942 ~ Joe Chambers, Musician: guitar, singer with The Chambers Brothers
• 1950 ~ Sam Neely, Singer
• 1960 ~ Debbi Peterson, Drummer, singer with Bangles
• 1961 ~ Roland Orzabal, Singer, guitarist
• 2002 ~ Frederick Selch, an advertising executive and magazine publisher who collected hundreds of antique musical instruments, died at the age of 72.
Selch began collecting almost 50 years ago and owned more than 300 musical instruments by 1977.
In that year, he founded the Federal Music Society, an organization dedicated to performing music from the Colonial-Federal period. The group’s 26 players used instruments in Selch’s collection to perform in more than 70 concerts.
Selch was also the owner, editor and publisher of Ovation, a monthly magazine about classical music, from 1983 to 1989. He produced the Broadway musical “Play Me a Country Song” in 1982, and in the past 10 years was involved in a series of American Music Festivals at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Selch, who received a master’s degree in radio-television production from Syracuse University, worked at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency from 1955 to 1974.
He is to be awarded a posthumous doctorate from the American Studies program at New York University.
• 2002 ~ Richard Lippold, a sculptor whose abstract works are featured at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall and at Harvard University, died. He was 87. Lippold created giant metal abstractions, many of which are suspended by wires so they appear to be hovering or moving through space.
His piece World Tree, a 27-foot structure of straight and circular metal tubes that resembles a radio antenna, stands on the Harvard University campus.
He is also known for Ad Astra, a double spire that rises 115 feet in front of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and Orpheous and Apollo, a constellation of bronze bars connected by wires in the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.
Lippold studied industrial design, piano and dance at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. He worked as a freelance industrial designer for several years before teaching art at the University of Michigan.
He later taught at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., and Hunter College in New York.
• 1904 ~ (William Allen) Count Basie, Bandleader, pianist
More information about Count Basie
• 1928 ~ Art Farmer, Trumpeter, flugelhorn, worked with Horace Henderson, Johnny Otis, Lionel Hampton Band; recorded be-bop classic Farmer’s Market; developed musical instrument called ‘flumpet’
1933 ~ Dame Janet Baker, British mezzo-soprano Read quotes by and about Baker
More information about Baker
• 1938 ~ Kenny (Kenneth Donald) Rogers, Grammy and CMA Award-winning singer; groups: The Kirby Stone Four, The New Christy Minstrels, The First Edition
There will be $1.6 million worth of piano on stage at the City Recital Hall on Friday night. With their legs and lids removed for transport, eight Steinway grand pianos will be trucked to the venue.
There they will be reassembled on stage and tuned, ready for eight of Australia’s finest classical pianists.
In The Steinway Spectacular 16 hands and 80 fingers will play some of classical music’s greatest hits.
Conducted by Guy Noble, the pianists will work as an ensemble to perform works by composers such as Ravel, Saint-Saens and George Gershwin. ”It’s a very large affair,” says Noble. ”Logistically, it’s a nightmare.” The piano technician Ara Vartoukian will spend hours tuning the instruments.
For past concerts in Melbourne the process sometimes took all night. ”The pianos all, in essence, sound the same, so they have to be absolutely in tune with each other.”
Even after the most careful tuning, things can go awry.
The pianists – Anthony Halliday, Roger Heagney, Clemens Leske, Tamara Smolyar, Mikhail Solovei, Evgeny Ukhanov, Gerard Willems and Alexey Yemtsov – usually perform as soloists. Every now and again, Noble says, one of them ”goes rogue”.
”One will suddenly break out and play their own thing,” he says. ”I have to herd them back into the pride, glaring at them with eyes of death. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to conduct. It’s like herding cats.”
There is no repertoire for an ensemble of pianists, so Noble has created new arrangements.
His favourite is a rendition of the children’s staple Chopsticks. ”That just goes wild,” he says.
The segment titled So You Think You Can Play Scales is also a crowd pleaser. ”It’s like Piano Idol. People get voted off if they go off the rails.”
Other pieces will feature the organist Calvin Bowman and the soprano Shu-Cheen Yu. Bowman, who usually plays above the stage in a loft, will join the other performers on stage on an electronic organ.
”It’s a relief for him to be down on stage because he suffers terribly from vertigo,” Noble says. ”He’s been terrified in organ lofts all over Australia.”
More boisterous extravaganza than a recital for purists, the performance will appeal to an eclectic crowd.
”We get classical music lovers, as well as people who are just curious. It’s pure fun and enjoyment.”
The Steinway Spectacular is at the City Recital Hall on Friday.
1918 ~ Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer and pianist
Grammy winner
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